Google's new acquisition Motorola Mobility says it has bagged $228m so far from a patent licensing deal with another, unnamed company – which appears likely to be BlackBerry maker RIM.
The Chocolate Factory's new mobile hardware tentacle got an upfront cash payment of $175m and a licensing agreement that brought its pre-tax …

COMMENTS

I am just wondering when this preposterous and destructive game.......

...........of musical patents is going to stop. Unless any one of these corporates actually believes that they are going to emerge as the "winner" by going the courtroom route then the industry better sit down and work out a framework for a deal. It really ought to have begun to dawn on them that any "victory" in the courtroom will likely be the very definition of a "pyrrhic victory". "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."

Not wanting to stick up for anyone apart from the literates but...

No, no

This was started before Google's acquisition, you see. I'm sure Google will now drop the whole case including all future royalties payments - or, even better, give all the royalties to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Google does no evil, none at all. Saint Schmidt and Saint Page are true angels on Earth. Amen.

What interests me is that the value of a company can be entirely dependent on the value of something as intangible, and potentially undisclosed, as a US patent. Surely this sort of thing makes it next to impossible to invest in a tech company? This isn't how the patent system was meant to work.

And it strikes me that Olympus missed a trick here. Why bother siphoning billions to the Caymans, when you can just buy a few dud patents? They should have called me.